Shivnarine Chanderpaul is the ICC's new Cricketer of the Year and a statement was duly issued from Dubai yesterday bearing his words of thanks "upon collecting the award". As cricket's glitterati were gathered in the Grosvenor Hotel in Dubai, and Chanderpaul was holed up in Taunton, trying to help Durham win their first championship, we can only thank Doctor Who for assisting with travel arrangements. This time cricket's governing body really had entered the world of make-believe.

This is a strange award: highly valued in India, which has a virtually limitless appetite for awards nights, but dismissed as a supreme irrelevance in England. Nevertheless there was something deeply satisfying about the fact that Chanderpaul, a cricketer of substance, ignored the glitz, honoured his contract and committed himself to an end-of-season championship match. Give the man a medal. On second thoughts, don't - it will just mean another awards night.

This is a vital game at the top of the championship and Chanderpaul had a sizeable impact. His third-wicket stand of 174 with Michael Di Venuto has given Durham a glimmer of victory, their lead of 41 with seven wickets left as much as could realistically be salvaged from another rain-shortened day, and he has batted Somerset out of the game.

But it would be an overstatement to say he gloriously entertained from start to finish. His first fifty, from 124 balls, had been so somnolent we began to wonder whether he really had been in Dubai. One photographer was proud of a picture that seemed to show him batting while asleep.

That is Shiv. He sits, sits, sits, assessing and deliberating and then in the flash of a blade the bowling side faces the hollow realisation that the diminutive left-hander with a crablike stance has watched enough. That moment came yesterday when he clipped Peter Trego serenely to the midwicket boundary. It was a different game from then on and Chanderpaul was running it.

Di Venuto's innings followed similar lines. His unbeaten 131 has so far taken more than six hours, another innings of uncompromising professionalism. In his more orthodox way he, too, batted with good judgment against an impotent Somerset attack which hardly explained the omission of Andrew Caddick. Determined attempts to accelerate after tea ended when Chanderpaul chopped on against Charl Willoughby and the second new ball. Somerset will have to play badly for Durham to force victory.